Wordsworth, Coleridge

and the revolution

of the creative mind
UNIT 11
First and second
editions of the
Lyrical Ballads – the
manifesto of the
first-generation
Romantics
(the second
edition includes
Wordsworth’s
Preface) – dubbed
by the critic William
Hazlitt ‘a new
dawn’, just like the
French Revolution
Coleridge’s intellectual
autobiography, witnessing to
his philosophical take on
poetic creativity (under the
influence of German idealism,
in the wake of Immanuel
Kant): the meeting of world
and mind, object and subject,
sensible experience and
intuition, passivity and activity;
a combination of intellect and
feeling.
 ► Both Wordsworth and Coleridge were at first passionate
supporters of the French Revolution – seen by the
intellectuals of the time as not simply a political event, but
the inauguration of a cultural shift, indeed of a new
humanity
► So radical politics (democracy, freedom, human rights) had
A revolution of the as a counterpart the idea that the time was ripe for a
revolution of the human mind – one in which the feeling
creative mind and creative capacities of the mind would be enlarged
(against the old rule of both kings and rationalism)
► Disappointment with the political aftermath of the French
Revolution (a new kind of despotism) did not impede the
pursuit of the poetic dream of the renovated mind, this time
circumscribed to the small anarchic community in the Lake
District
 ► The figure of the poet
A new vision of
► The powers of imagination and memory
literary creation
► The approach to nature and natural symbolism
The poet
 ►‘What is a Poet? … He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is
true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and
tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature,
and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be
common among mankind.’
Wordsworth,
►Histask: producing pleasure – ‘It is an acknowledgment of the
Preface to LB: beauty of the universe …; it is a task light and easy to him who
the poet as looks at the world in the spirit of love: further, it is a homage
embodiment of paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand
elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and
common humanity, feels, and lives, and moves.’
defined through a
commonality of ►Claiming the domain of ‘ordinary language’ for poetry, as a
feeling route to tapping the natural forces of human feeling (note the
Rousseauvian echoes here); hence songs, ballads, popular
poetic forms.
Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper

…
Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;—
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
 ►‘What is poetry?--is so nearly the same question with, what is a
poet?--that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of
the other.’

►‘The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul

of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to
Coleridge, BL, ch. XIV: each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He
the poet as diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were)
fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to
heightened expression which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination
[…] [a power which] reveals itself in the balance or
of the shaping reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness,
principle of the with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with
the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of
imagination novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; etc’

►Claiming the domain of ‘vision’ for poetry seen as an

expression of the fusion of intellect, feeling and imagination,
and of the union of perception with creation.
 Coleridge, Kubla Khan, or A Vision in a Dream

…
A damsel with a dulcimer
   In a vision once I saw:
   It was an Abyssinian maid
   And on her dulcimer she played,
   Singing of Mount Abora.
   Could I revive within me
   Her symphony and song,
   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Kubla Khan by Dugald Walker (1922)

Memory and
imagination
 ► All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings. [...]
Wordsworth, ► It takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the
emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the
Preface to LB: tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred
the creative power of to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is
gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the
memory mind.
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration […]
Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened […]
 “On the imagination, or esemplastic power” (cf. ch. 10:
“esemplastic” -- I constructed [the word] myself from the Greek
words, eis en plattein, to shape into one)

►FANCY: has no other counters to play with, but fixities and

definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory
emancipated from the order of time and space...
Coleridge, BL ch. XIII:
►IMAGINATION: I consider either as primary, or secondary. The
the creative power of primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime
the imagination agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite
mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The
secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former,
co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the
primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree,
and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is
rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize
and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects)
are essentially fixed and dead.
 ‘Imagination […] [a power which] reveals itself in the balance
or reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of
sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete;
the idea with the image; the individual with the representative;
the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar
objects; etc’
Coleridge, BL ch. XIV:
creation as E.g., the unification of contraries at the level of imagery in
concordia discors Kubla Khan:

(harmony of
The shadow of the dome of pleasure 
discordant elements) Floated midway on the waves; 
Where was heard the mingled measure 
From the fountain and the caves. 
It was a miracle of rare device, 
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! 
VISION, LOSS, RECUPERATION
Wordsworth, Immortality Ode
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is now, the glory and the dream?
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
VISION, LOSS, RECUPERATION
Coleridge, Dejection, An Ode
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear –
Fuseli, Silence, 1799-1801
O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.
Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, […]
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth!
… Mad Lutanist! …
Thou actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!
Thou mighty poet, e'en to frenzy bold!
Nature and
natural symbolism
 Tintern Abbey

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
Wordsworth: To chasten and subdue.--And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
The interconnection of Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
all there is as a basis of Of something far more deeply interfused,
human sympathy Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains…
Thus: Wordsworth,
imparting metaphysical
dignity to the picturesque
and the pastoral: Tintern
Abbey, Immortality Ode

Alvan Fisher, Pastoral Landscape, 1854

Wordsworth:
Nature as teacher
Expostulation and Reply
‘William’ to ‘Matthew’, on contemplative
(and passive) love of nature vs. (busy,
foolish) love of books
"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.
"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
The Tables Turned
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher. […]
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
 The Aeolian Harp

Full many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd,

And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various, as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute !
Coleridge:
the unity of all sentient
And what if all of animated nature
being (pantheism) Be but organic Harps diversly fram'd,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all ?

A view of the passivity of mind at odds with his other views on

the blend of passivity and activity in poetic creation
 ► Nature as a book or a language signifying the animating
‘intellectual breeze’ / ‘soul’ / ‘God’ behind empirical
appearances; crucially, this is a necessary (not arbitrary
and conventional) signifying relationship = natural
symbolism
► The literary symbol is an analogue to the natural symbol
(without ever being able to translate its fullness into
language) and it aims to achieve the same unifying
Coleridge: function that the natural symbol has
natural and linguistic ► A symbol ‘partakes of the reality which it renders intelligible’
and is grounded in the ‘translucence’ (transparency) of the
symbolism Universal in the General, the General in the Special, & the
Special in the Individual; also, of the Eternal in the
Temporal; and of the Whole in the Part (The Statesman’s
Manual, 1816)
► A poem needs to grow like an ‘organic whole’ (like a plant
rather than like a machine) and needs to be read as such,
as an autonomous aesthetic whole → on to early c20 New
Criticism and the Two Cultures controversy
 ► The plan of LB: Coleridge’s part was to treat of supernatural
‘incidents’ and ‘agents’ that would exhibit a ‘dramatic truth’ of
human emotion and would thus come under a ‘willing
suspension of disbelief’ – e.g., ‘Death’ and ‘Life-in-Death’
playing dice to decide the fate of the sailors, or the ‘spirit’
guiding the ship home
► What about the ‘natural’ characters and events – such as the
Coleridge’s mariner, the hermit, the wedding guest, the water and the sky,
the motion and the motionlessness, the killing of the albatross
symbolism in action: and the blessing of the water snakes? Despite the narrative form
of the ballad-like epic, they suggest symbolism at both the
The Rime of the natural and the linguistic levels
Ancient Mariner ► Think life and death; egotism vs. love; guilt and penance;
existential solitude, restless vagrancy and the meeting of lonely
souls; etc.
► Think also of the structure of the poem: is there any narrative
causality (does one event logically lead to the next)? Is there
any realistic exposition of human motivation (why does the
mariner kill the albatross)? If not, how does the text work as a
whole? Can you see structure at the level of symbolic
signification?
 ► Again a ballad-like epic form, yet this time fractured (see
the prose introduction suggesting this is owing to the
breaking of the opium-induced vision in a dream once the
waking mind comes into action) and instead of the
supernatural agents and events, we are treated to an
Oriental, exotic story
► Again the story offers natural places and objects (Xanadu,
Coleridge’s the garden around the dome, the river Alph, the
symbolism in action: subterranean caves) and the character of Kubla, the
Mongol Khan, plus the speaking ‘I’ that intervenes in the
Kubla Khan poem (‘…in a vision once I saw…)
► But what do they mean? A symbolic reading seems to be
required here as well. Think creative imagination and vision
(and its loss); the figure of the poet; solitude, again; rest and
motion; construction and destruction; up and down; diurnal
and nocturnal; measure and measureless-ness; and the
(impossible?) harmony of dissonant elements